Rather than list all my publications, I would like to tell you a little
about why I studied certain topics and then give you representative examples
of my publications on each topic.

I seem to have a preference for studying new topics and, as a result
did some of the very early work (either by myself or with colleagues) in
the areas of two-career families, rape, newborn intensive care and the
family experience of the college application process.

My first research was on two-career families. In the late
1960's when I began this research it was unusual for women, especially
married women, to have careers. Nevertheless, some married women
did pursue careers and I thought we should know more about them and about
how they and their husbands had managed to successfully go against the
norm. Through in-depth interviews with husbands and wives, I looked
at the issues such couples face--deciding where to live, finding jobs,
juggling family and career responsibilities, managing time--and the solutions
they use.

I then turned my attention to rape (with Burgess), looking at
it from the point of view of the victim/survivor. In the early 1970's
the second wave of the women's movement had swept across the country and
women were speaking out about the barriers they faced including the violence
directed against them. Despite the devastating impact of rape, little
research existed on the victim's situation. As researchers, we were
interested in the impact of rape on the victim and the institutional response
to rape cases. We arranged to have a major hospital notify us whenever
a rape victim arrived at the emergency ward. We were able, in most
cases, to be at the hospital within 30 minutes to interview the victim
and observe the scene. We also spoke again later with victims and,
in those cases that went to court, accompanied them to court. The
result was an empirical study of the institutional processing of rape victims
as they came into contact with police stations, hospitals, and courthouses.

I next used my ethnographic skills (with Guillemin) in a study of newborn
intensive care. In the space of a decade, intensive care for
critically ill newborns went from an experimental venture to a widespread
and controversial hospital service. Our participant observation study
focused on the social context of medical decision-making about how aggressively
to intervene in the sensitive area of newborn life and on the dilemma that
neonatal intensive care has become a mixed blessing.

Two-career families, rape, and newborn intensive care certainly are
very different substantively. Nevertheless, several themes
run throughout all three projects. First, all three projects look,
in the language of Everett Hughes, my mentor, at the relationship between
the person and the institution. They deal with how people wend their
way through and/or are processed by institutional structures. Second,
at the time I began researching them, they were all new areas. Third,
all of these projects were based on in-depth interviews and/or participant
observation. Fourth, all were based on modest size samples.
Fifth, the results have stood the test of time, suggesting that if you
choose your sample carefully and if you listen well, you will learn a lot
without the need for a large sample.

I am presently doing research, with David A. Karp and Paul S. Gray,
on yet another area. We call our project "Getting In: Family Dynamics
and the College Application Process." We believe that the college
application process is a critical turning point in American society for
thousands upon thousands of high school seniors and their families.
Given the importance of the process, there is a need for research that
looks, in a holistic way, at what the process means subjectively for the
participants themselves.

The college application process also provides a window for enlarging
upon our understanding of a number of important features of the broader
society such as the symbolic significance of children leaving home, central
aspects of how the social class system replicates itself, mid-life parenting
and how parents make decisions about the degree to which they should intervene
in the lives of their children, the ways in which parents' identities and
aspirations are wrapped up in the achievements of their children, parental
perceptions about the significance of a college education, parents' changing
image of their children, and their views about money and the meaning of
education.

We conducted this study by following 30 families through the college
application process. We did in-depth interviews, including a lengthy
joint interview with the husband and wife, and then a separate lengthy
interview with the son or daughter.

So once again, I find myself looking at the relationship between individuals
and institutions, studying a new area, using in-depth interviews, and using
a modest-size sample. Hopefully, this study too, ultimately will
stand the test of time.

On occasion, I also have written about the careers of others or my
own career. Everett Hughes liked to observe his students and
referred, in an article, to teaching as fieldwork. I turned the tables
on him and wrote an article about his career from the point of view of
a student observer. Later, on another occasion, I wrote a chapter
about my own career choices that were made in a social era when women were
not expected to pursue careers. While thinking about these choices I developed
the concept of the third shift which I use to refer to all the work
women do to manage the effects of sexism in their daily lives as well as
to fight sexism more broadly.

A present side project on what I call social genealogy will probably
turn into my next main project. At least two of my ancestors were
in the New World in the 1700's and all branches of the family had arrived
by the time of the Civil War. All four grandparents (three of whom
I knew) were pioneers in the white settlement of the Pacific Northwest,
specifically, in Idaho (near Coeur d' Alene) and Bellingham, Washington
(near the Canadian border). As a child I was interested in and asked
questions about my ancestors. My parents were not particularly interested
in the subject, but they provided information, and my mother connected
me with two relatives who helped me write down a basic list of names and
relationships.

As time has passed, I have become more interested not in just a list
of names, but in what the lives of these people were like. Hence,
I think an appropriate term for such research is social genealogy.
It also occurred to me that these people represent a tiny piece of history
of the development of this country--a piece that is likely to be lost because
historians until recently have focused on the leaders and the famous.
Another point is that it is harder to find out about the women--their last
names change and what they did is not necessarily recorded. So I
see the project also as helping to document women's lives that otherwise
would be lost to history.

I keep collecting bits and pieces of information from private and public
sources. I started with my list of names that I collected as a child
and family memorabilia. I then did oral history interviews in Seattle
with an aunt born in 1909 whose remarkable memory provided details about
her Idaho pioneer childhood, names of relatives, and stories about their
lives.

Armed with family data, I visited public sources such as the National
Archives in Washington, D.C for data including census records (listing
individuals by name); civil war pension records; and homestead records
(including reports about use and improvement filed by homesteaders).
Some of the people whose lives I'm researching are:

Jennie Elizabeth Swezy (married name Thomas) Born 1870, NY.

pioneer in British Columbia and Bellingham, WA;

family lived in small towns/farms in NY

names include Swezey/Sweezy, Hammond, Russell.

Isaac Newton Thomas (born 1863, Centerville, New York)

pioneer in British Columbia and Bellingham, WA.

family members lived in small towns/farms in NY, having emigrated from
Cardigan, South Wales between 1831 and 1839

names include Thomas, Davis, Jones

Mayme Wade (married name Lytle) (born 1880)

pioneer in Idaho; homesteader; attended college,Lindsborg KS.

family members lived in Independence Kansas; previously Kansas City,Missouri

names include Wade, Couch, Long, Hayes

Clarence LeRoy Lytle (born 1879)

pioneer in Idaho; homesteader; pharmacist

family members lived in the midwest including Wichita, Kansas; previously
Kentucky

names include Lytle, Strode, Kistler

There's much more to do. This whole research process is an
adventure, sort of a combination of detective story and jigsaw puzzle.
I'm not sure what the outcome will be, but I was impressed with Karen V.
Hansen's paper "When Biography Meets History" and the way in which an analysis
of an individual's life can illuminate aspects of social history.
I'm interested in hearing about and from other people who are doing similar
research.

Representative Publications:

Two-Career Families; Women's Careers

The Two-Career Family. (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1972).

"Women's Career Patterns: Appearance and Reality," Journal of the National
Association of Women Deans and Counselors 36 (Winter, 1973), pp76-81.